John Hawkins: Changing directions here, one of the things that people who try to discredit you often bring up is your comment back in 1994, "If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head." What prompted that comment and other similar ones and do you regret giving a caller that advice?

G. Gordon Liddy: Well, no. Because as usual, people remember part of what I said, but not all of what I said. What I did was restate the law. I was talking about a situation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes smashing into a house, doesn't say who they are, and their guns are out, they're shooting, and they're in the wrong place. This has happened time and time again. The ATF has gone in and gotten the wrong guy in the wrong place. The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If you're going to do that, you should know that they're wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all I'm doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated.

John Hawkins: Yeah, that's how it always seems to go. Now in your newest book, you say that Watergate was actually "not to repair a telephone tap but to collect dirt on an alleged call-girl ring at the DNC headquarters" and that the Watergate burglars were looking for photos of John Dean's wife. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

G. Gordon Liddy: It's a very long, detailed story and after I publicized it, I and a lot of other people were sued by John Dean and his wife. It took 8 years to get them to court and when we finally did, they dropped the charges.

John Dean thereafter procured a woman named Ida "Maxie" Wells and provided her with his lawyer. She did sue and we had a trial in which all of these issues were aired and I won. Briefly, here's what happened.

Back in those days, the FBI was investigating 3 different call-girl rings that were operating at the time in Washington DC. One of them was operating out of the Columbia Plaza apartments which is across the
street from the Watergate. According to the supervising assistant district attorney, whose name was John Rudy, he was told by the FBI that they had established a connection with the ring to a person in the Democratic National Committee headquarters. That person was described as either a secretary or as an administrative assistant and a female. When the Democrats themselves found the wiretap that everybody supposed was on Mr. O'Brien, there was never any wiretap on Mr. O'Brien, the wiretap was on the phone used by that woman. The burglars, when they were apprehended, were not anywhere near Mr. O'Brien's office. They were clustered around the desk of that woman, they had set up the photographic equipment on the desk of that woman. The way the call-girl ring operated was by a photographic brochure with pictures of the girls (in it). John Dean knew that, this was a John Dean operation. The question then comes to mind; "Well how would John Dean, counsel to the President, know something like that"? Well, that's because his then paramour, now his wife, Maureen, when she was not shacked up with John, was the roommate of the madame.

Of course, we knew the identity of the madame, her name was Heidi Rikan. She was a German national and she operated under the street name of Cathy Dieter. When Maureen Dean wrote her book, 'Mo': A Woman's View of Watergate, which was sort of autobiographical, she included her wedding pictures to John. There, one of her attendants, in all her glory, was the madame. So, that's how John found out. But, you can read all about it in the book!

John Hawkins: I look forward to doing that. You know one of the things that has always puzzled me about Watergate, was that as we now know, Nixon absolutely buried McGovern in 1972. So, I've always wondered why anyone in the Nixon White House thought it was necessary to do something like Watergate. Can you shed some light on that subject?

G. Gordon Liddy: Well sure. Now remember when all of this was; this was prior to the Democrats having selected their candidate. No one knew who the candidate was going to be. Before he broke down in front of

the Union Leader Office, Mr. Muskie was thought to be very Lincolnian and to be a strong candidate. We never knew whether or not Ted Kennedy would make a try and despite his Chappaquiddick troubles, it was thought that he would be a potent foe. So the political intelligence apparatus was set into effect because no one knew who the candidate was going to be.
But, the plan that I drew up did not include going into the DNC because that's not where you get political intelligence on an opposing Presidential candidate. Think about it. We had the committee to reelect the President. That's what ran the Nixon campaign in 1972, not the RNC. The RNC & the DNC raised money, but there's always a special organization that is designed to run the Presidential campaign. That is what one would spy on, not the DNC or RNC..